Mabel Claire Williams Hinkley Engle Oral History and Drumm Family Stories

Mabel Claire Williams Hinkley Engle Oral History and Drumm Family Stories

Transcribed by Raeburn Sottile

Note: unfortunately, the tape is fairly old and quite degraded. This is especially an issue in the second section, where the speaker talks very quickly.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewer and interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Churchill County Museum or any of its employees.

ENGLE: Hello, Ellen. It's been many, many years since I have seen you, and I've never had the pleasure of meeting your husband. Of course, I know the older members of your family very well and love them all. We shared the joy- As we shared the joys of a country school. Back to the beginning. I was born in Stillwater. [long pause]

ENGLE: My Family 1903. My family had moved from the Sifford ranch to Stillwater while a house was being built for us in Fallon. My older brother, my older sister, Ruth and my brother Roy were born on the ranch owned by my father, George Williams, and his brother, William H. Williams, and my brother Gordon was born on the Sifford Ranch. The younger of my brothers, William O. Williams, Bill, in 1906 in Fallon completed the Family.

ENGLE: Fallon must have been a busy place that year of 1903. My father hauled rock from Rattlesnake Hill into Fallon for the foundation of the new courthouse. He drove a 14-horse team, and my brother Roy said they could see the big team as it left the hill headed to Fallon. My father later drove a 12-horse team containing supplies from the Railroad in Hazen.

ENGLE: It was always a great event when the big teams came into Fallon. The leader wore bells, and when we heard them, we ran down to Williams Avenue to watch the smooth way which team and driver made the necessary turns [long pause] through the town.

ENGLE: The mines were beginning to be developed east of Fallon, and each week usually brought mining men and possible investors from the East. My father had a 12-horse team to take supplies to the mining camps [long pause] of Wonder and Fairview. He also had a 6-horse team that was driven at night to make faster runs in Hazen with beer and guys. It was a real event when those supplies reached the mines.

ENGLE: In 1907, a railroad spur was run from Hazen to Fallon, and the big teams and wagons were sold. By this time, we had a large livery stable and my father [pauses] had a transfer and range [stage?] business in Fallon and the Valley.

[Tape cuts. Ed- though this is effectively a repetition of what has been said so far, I have included both as they each have some details the other does not]

ENGLE: Hello, Ellen. It's been many, many years since I have seen you, and I've never had the pleasure of meeting your husband. Of course, I knew the older members of your family very well and loved them all, as we shared the joys of a country school.

ENGLE: Back to the beginning: I was born in Stillwater, Churchill County, Nevada. My proud family was waiting there in Stillwater, having come from the Sifford Ranch, just outside of Stillwater, for a house was being built for us in Fallon, which was becoming the new County seat of Churchill County. And so, the old Churchill County courthouse and I were born the same year, and we’ve stood up pretty well through the years, I think.

ENGLE: We lived in Fallon. My father had built a large livery stable, and he freighted also from Hazen to Fallon to mining camps east of Fallon. It was one of our greatest pleasures as children to run down to Williams Avenue when we knew his team was coming in and watch him bring in those large teams, watched him turn the corners… and bring his large wagons straight into the barn.

[tape cuts]

WOMAN: How would you do that?

MAN: It was coiled. And they put a ring around one of the legs clear down to the bottom and wire a thing to attach it, almost certainly at the same place that he would sit at the table every day, so he came in and pranked himself. Went into the Zach [?] Taylor smoked him out of the kitchen with two great big platters, one in either hand like this, and Otis were standing right behind slurpy by then. Slurpy made this one go way down 2 or 3 paces in Ione [?], got this platter right down in front of him and he sat down and he drilled two holes right through the base of that chair for copper wires and had a battery and a ford coil under there, and Taylor just reached over he's holding as [unintelligible] as could be with these two plates up in the air, you know, couldn't have pasta without eating his ham, and he kicked that switch closed with his foot. Slurpy came down on there and that ford coil went Zip!

WOMAN: [laughing]

MAN: [unintelligable] That platter flew all the way over his head, and ah! Right up over his head [laughs]. We got the boy. He had the charge real good. He didn't come back to eat. Warned the bank about us, rolled up his stuff, sat down and waited for the truck the next morning and he was gone. [laughs] So that's the… That chair stayed there for a while after that.  And Myrle and the Taylor Smirl [?] blasted around from Raley's, you know, you come over thinking of something else, you sit down there, go to eat, and just when you're least expecting there would be Taylor Smirl, he brings the shock. He got everybody including my dad! [laughs] In fact, he outlawed that!

MAN: I knew Laverne Drumm, and Andy and Laverne's mother Doris before Dillard was born. Andrea was just a little girl in my arms. And Laverne was obviously a very superior person. She was bright, and she was active, a very athletic, physically superior and mentally so, it turned out in later years. They wouldn't give her credit early on for being mentally superior, but she was. She turned out to have a very great skill in art, painting and drawing. She was just naturally very gifted. Well, anyway, when Doris and Andy got married, and then Andrea came along, Andy used to go about loaded, as was his want, and he would express himself to Laverne "Oh, I wish you were a boy! You're just great! Too bad that you're not a boy." And this just used to shake her up. Now, after they- you had to be a boy to be appreciated. But then Dillard was born and then it became Laverne's job to [inaudible] Doris and taking care of him. And Andy then, of course, really doted on Dillard. And as Dillard grew up, he had every last bloody thing he wanted. I remember when- Aurora was just older. I rented an airplane with Hayward and Doug Hoover climbed in and we flew up to Fallon on a wintery long weekend or vacation. It was either Christmas vacation or between semesters or Easter Vacation and it stormed badly up there at that time. We got into Fallon okay, spent two or three days with Doug's dad there, took Leonard up for a ride, and Peggy Patten [?] Wheat. When we went back to Reno… In the course of this, bumming around these airports, saw this beautiful little Great Lakes sportcruiser [?] on the ground that and Gene Nortook, "well I bet this plane's from Fallon." And I says, "Boy, it's well kept! Who's is that?" Gene says, "Well I've took care of it a long time. It belongs to Dillard Drumm." Andy bought him this airplane, and he says, "that little rascal can sure fly, let me tell you!" And one of these afternoons as we were out there standing around, shooting the blow with Gene, why Dillard showed up with his helmet dangling out of his hip pocket and slapped it on, went over and jumped in the Great Lakes and Gene spun the prop for him and away he went, you know, and pretty soon you could hear it going up the Rrrrre-owwww! Just ringing that thing out at about 10,000 feet, doing acrobatics just for the feel of it, you know. And he came down, brought it in and landed it, and I didn't know him, I mean, he wasn't… I knew who he was but he didn't know who I was and I wasn't about to go all through that. I mean, he wouldn't [inaudible] anyway. So anyway, we left the guy. And then I can remember seeing the item in the newspaper there, Dillard had collided head on with that car on route from Reno to Fallon and killed him and I don't know how many others. And I thought, "Oh Dillard, you poor kid, but man your poor dad." He wanted a son so bad. He had tied Laverne in psychological knots for the rest of her life, and she was tied up in psychological knots and I… I give most of the credit for that to Andy, and to see it- I don't think he would have done it if he'd known all that then. I don't think he had any idea that he was doing it to her, but he did. And then a few years after that- Oh no, this was before that happened, Laverne died in that crash at Ridgeville [? ed- newspapers say it was Carrville, California] Did you guys ever hear how that was?

WOMAN: She was flying in Dillard's plane.

MAN: Was it Dillard's plane? I didn't know that. She-

WOMAN: Could it have been because it wasn't powered enough, like she was used to?

MAN: Well, I didn't know that was Dillard's plane. What I knew, having been to that Ridgeville airport since, every time I look at that Ridgeville airport I think of her.

WOMAN: How old was she? [Inaudible]

[tape cuts, this is a repetition of the very first section, but longer]

ENGLE: Hello, Ellen. It's been many, many years since I have seen you, and I've never had the pleasure of meeting your husband. Of course, I knew the older members of your family very well and loved them all, as we shared the joy of a country school.

ENGLE: Back to the beginning: I was born in Stillwater, 1903. My family had moved from the Sifford ranch to Stillwater while a house was being built for us in Fallon. My older brother, my older sister, Ruth and my brother Roy were born on the ranch owned by my father, George Williams, and his brother, William H. Williams, and my brother Gordon was born on the Sifford Ranch. The younger of my brothers, William O. Williams, Bill, in 1906 in Fallon completed the Family.

 ENGLE: Fallon must have been a busy place that year of 1903. My father hauled rock from Rattlesnake Hill into Fallon for the foundation of the new courthouse. He drove a 14-horse team, and my brother Roy said they could see the big team as it left the hill headed to Fallon. My father later drove a 12-horse team containing supplies from the Railroad in Hazen.

ENGLE: It was always a great event when the big teams came into Fallon. The leader wore bells, and when we heard them, we ran down to Williams Avenue to watch the smooth way which team and driver made the necessary turns [long pause] through the town.

ENGLE: The mines were beginning to be developed east of Fallon, and each week usually brought mining men and possible investors from the East. My father had a 12-horse team to take supplies to the mining camps [long pause] of Wonder and Fairview. He also had a 6-horse team that was driven at night to make faster runs in Hazen with beer and guys. It was a real event when those supplies reached the mines.

ENGLE: In 1907, a railroad spur was run from Hazen to Fallon, and the big teams and wagons were sold. By this time, we had a large livery stable and my father [pauses] had a transfer and range [stage?] business in Fallon and the Valley.

ENGLE: I always felt it was a privilege to be in Fallon in those early years, and to watch our town develop street by bare [?] street into town and nice homes and tree-lined streets. It was such a busy, bustling time, those early years. There was one interruption that I can never forget. We were… aroused from a sound sleep by the frantic jangling of a fire bell. Fallon was burning. We were frantically trying to stem the blaze. The west side of Maine Street burned and houses and cabins nearby. Our house and the livery stable were threatened. The horses had early on been taking hot [?], rearing and snorting. We children were moved to the west end, carrying our clothes over our arms, and stayed for most of the night. A neighbor had called to my father earlier that evening, that their tank was filled for the first time. Later, they had to shoot holes in the tank to let the water out before the structure fell.

ENGLE: The town, like so many Western Towns really did, and went on to greater goals. In 1912, we moved to a ranch and new livestock was bought. My pop did join the ranch of Vet Smart. Who had donated the lands for the school, hence the Smart District name. We had only to walk across a field climb over a style, and be on school grounds. The style reminded me if you had no sense, the correct way to get over a fence. [?]

ENGLE: Our parents were always interested in better schools, and so a few years later we joined the Wightman district school and became Union School. Here was where we met the other members of your family, Ellen, and other members of the Wightman District. Pete Cushman, the Fergusons, Harrigans, and many others became our friends. Our quick walk across the field became a walk of a mile and a half, except of course when it stormed and we went in a buggy or rode horseback. High school in Fallon was hard work, but lots of fun. Again, it was most pleasant to meet students from all over the county. Harmon district, Northam, Old River, Wildes, and, of course, Fallon.